Hey guys,
I am working on some vfx shots for an extended version of the 'harry potter and the healthy hallows' parts. It's for an italien harry potter fanpage. So they have no rights to sell them but they also won't. My job is it to edit some vfx in the deleted scenes you get from the original harry potter dvd. My worries now, if I can use these deleted scenes in my showreel. I mean I did 100% of the visual effects but have no rights of the footage. But I also won't use the footage for commercial use.

I'd actually say you probably shouldn't put that on your reel, as it could be seen as potentially misleading, in that someone might think that you're trying to make it look like you worked on the film, when you didn't.

I honestly don't know what the copyright side of this is, but as someone who did actually work on the Harry Potter films, I'd say that only those of us who actually worked on the films should get to use footage from the films on our reels. I guess that probably sounds selfish, but that's just my immediate feeling upon reading this.

I'd assume Warner Bros. still owns the copyright so you adding effects into it doesn't really mean anything. That being said, no one can stop you from putting it on your showreel but you could have the Warner copyright and then say above it maybe "Effects added for fan video" or something to make clear you didn't work on the actual film. I'd assume Warners would still frown at this, but it's up to you to take the chance, you're already working on the job.

While it's fine to use this sort of stuff as practice footage for learning, copyright is pretty clear in this regard, it doesn't matter if your not making money off it or not - you don't have any rights to the footage.

But honestly I don't think you have too much to worry about Warner Brothers coming after you, I think Leigh's reasons for not including it are more on point - this is a small industry and people generally get pretty annoyed when they see other people take credit for their work.

So while this is footage from a deleted scene, some of those shots could have been worked on by one of the vfx studios involved before they were omitted.

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